Bridge to strife: Paladino’s Bridge to Life grant shows folly of member items

Queens Councilwoman Vickie Paladino has neatly demonstrated the folly of Council member items by providing discretionary funding to Bridge to Life, a “crisis pregnancy center” that claims to give women health information but really exists to dissuade them from having medically safe abortions. The $10,000 was approved by the Council and signed by the mayor in June as part of the budget, but just flagged by immigration news site Documented to the consternation of many of Paladino’s pro-choice colleagues.

It’s listed right there in the Council slush fund, called Schedule C, on page 41, following $25,000 for Bridge Street Development Corp. and before $5,000 for Bridging Access to Care.

This is no aberration of how the member items work. This is exactly how they were designed, as disbursements to favored nonprofits for members to push ideologies and reward allies with little oversight.

If the Council wants to keep that structure so they can dole out cash to friends and supporters, they must accept that also means some of that cash will end up with crisis pregnancy centers pushing misinformation on pregnant women, and all manner of other groups they might find unsavory: anti-gun control groups, vaccine skeptics, and whatever else.

If they don’t like it, perhaps they should accept that none of it makes sense and relinquish their precious slush fund to a more orderly and professional disbursement process. It’s not that the half-billion dollars isn’t desperately needed by community organizations, youth employment programs, senior centers and assorted other nonprofits, but the money shouldn’t depend on being in your local Council member’s good graces.

Bridge to Life is as qualified as the next nonprofit on Paladino’s wish, no matter what her fellow slush funders complain. Dumping the whole process is the smart move. We doubt that Bridge to Life, which has a First Amendment right to operate, would be getting government funding if career staff at say, the Department of Health or the Department of Youth & Community Development was deciding on the grants. Let’s leave it in their hands.